Zero

by Claire Stevens

  Chapter Eleven

  We stood at the brow of a wooded hill, looking down at the village of Hawksrest.

  It was now five days since I’d washed. My nails and the webbing between my fingers were ringed with grime, despite washing them in the stream whenever I got a chance. It was hard to tell where my dark nail varnish ended and the filth began. Walking in the sunshine and warm breeze for so long had left the skin on my face feeling tight and dry and although I’d kept my hair scraped back in a ponytail my scalp felt greasy and itchy.

  And I smelled. I smelled like someone who had just walked for over seventy miles in the warm sunshine, wearing the same clothes, carrying a really heavy pack.

  Since starting off from Saltmarsh three days ago, I’d eaten nothing but dried meat of an unidentified origin, steamed nettles, and the ubiquitous sawdusty protein bars. I was at the point where I would have cheerfully sold my nan for a spaghetti Bolognese. Or cheese and biscuits. Or bacon and eggs. Or pie. Or anything, really.

  On the plus side, after clearing out the demon nest we spent the rest of that day and night without encountering any trouble. Of the two other groups of travellers we’d come across, we’d exchanged nothing more than polite nods with either of them.

  And on the even bigger plus side, I was working off my totally spurious shoplifting charge and helping to save a young kidnapped child into the bargain.

  I still itched with dirt, though.

  And I’d begun to wonder even more about the reasons Oriel and Neve had for bringing me here. I supposed my help had been useful while they were clearing out the demon nest, but evidently no one had been expecting me to help.

  Still. Ahead of us stood Hawksrest. A settlement. Which meant shops, an inn, a bed with a roof over it, a hot meal and washing facilities.

  Bring. It. On.

  My scuzzy second hand boots had mercifully flat heels, which meant that the cobbled streets of Hawksrest posed little problem as we quickly wound our way along the streets. Golden demon nets rose high into the air above us; it was startling how quickly I’d grown accustomed to seeing them. I would have liked to have stopped to look in shop windows, but I reasoned I didn’t have any money to spend anyway and hurried to keep up with the others.

  The village inn was a sprawling stone building wedged in between smaller houses and shops. Looking like a band of vagabonds, with the exception of Raelthos who looked like he was on his way to a garden party, we stood at the small bar as Neve negotiated our rooms.

  ‘There’s a temple nearby; we should all go and pay our respects while we’re here,’ she told us, rooms negotiated. ‘I know we are all keen to wash up and change clothes, but I doubt there will be enough hot water for all of us to take baths at once, so we’ll work two shifts. One group can bathe while the other can go to the temple. Who wants-’

  ‘Bath!’ shouted Kallista, at the same time as Raelthos said ‘Bath, please,’

  She looked ruefully at Oriel and I. ‘Looks like we’re going to the temple.’

  The entrance to the Temple of the Celestial Light stood a little way back from the street. High ornate gates led through to a carefully sculpted garden. I felt incredibly clodhoppery as I walked down the delicate path, trying hard not to squish any flowers. Religion wasn’t exactly banned in my house, but it certainly wasn’t encouraged and I tried to appear nonchalant and not at all astonished by or judgemental of this unexpected outing.

  Inside, the temple was quiet and cool and smelled of mustiness and candle wax. High, decorative windows let in a lot of light, warming the whitewashed walls. There were banks of candles of all shapes, sizes and degrees of meltedness near the door. Neve and Oriel lit new candles and added them to the stacks as we walked in.

  I felt awkward and nudged Oriel’s arm. ‘What do I do?’ I hissed.

  ‘You don’t need to do anything,’ he laughed softly. ‘Just take a seat, we won’t be long.’

  I sat at the end of a row of hard-backed chairs near the door, trying hard not to look like I in no way belonged there. I wondered what my mother, who had framed the paperwork of the ASBO from the time she challenged our parish vicar to a fight, would say about this.

  As I waited, I looked around the room. It was divided into twelve separate areas, not formally cordoned off, but distinct nonetheless. Each area was dominated by its own large window with a shrine below. Bowls containing offerings lay on altars, and people knelt before icons of their gods, heads bowed.

  The windows all depicted different scenes. The one nearest me showed a crowned pomegranate tree; the next one along was a dagger bisecting a crescent moon. All highly symbolic, I supposed, but of what I wasn’t sure. Only one window was unadorned, glazed with clear glass and unlike the other shrines which were filled with statues, paintings and banners, the shrine below this window was empty.

  Head bowed in supplication, Neve knelt before a window depicting a many-armed woman carrying an assortment of weapons. Neve’s expression was beatific and her hair glowed gold in the light. She looked like an angel. A very fierce angel. I wondered who the goddess was that she was praying to. From the angle I was sitting at, she almost seemed, creepily, to be watching Neve pray.

  I let my gaze wander over the other side of the temple to Oriel, at a shrine dedicated to a wolf god, his face more serious than I’d ever seen it. I watched him slightly self-consciously, hoping Neve wouldn’t look up and see me staring at her brother like a creeper. His hair was swept back untidily and, like me, he exuded the air of someone who had been sleeping rough. He didn’t seem to notice the two girls at the altar next to his, who, instead of praying, were staring at him and giggling to each other.

  The atmosphere in the temple was so peaceful and it was so pleasant to be sitting in an actual chair for the first time in nearly a week that I almost started to nod off and only noticed the woman in the long red dress standing next to me when she gave a soft, determined cough.

  I instantly sprang up. ‘Hi! Oh, er, sorry. Am I in your seat?’ I shuffled across, hoping that I hadn’t been defiling a holy chair with my bum or something.

  The woman in red gave no answer and sat down gracefully in the seat I’d just vacated. The gauzy red veil over her face made it hard to see if she was even looking at me, so I was surprised when she spoke. ‘Good morning,’ she said in a soft, willowy voice. She bowed her head gently towards me.

  My eyes darted around the rows of chairs, trying to see if she might be talking to someone else. Nope, apparently not. ‘Um, hello,’ I said awkwardly, feeling like she could sense the atheism rolling off me in waves. ‘Am I not supposed to be here?’

  Her veil was ringed with tiny gold beads that shivered when she shook her head. ‘We welcome all those who enter the temple with a pure heart.’

  I wondered how welcome I’d continue to be if she found out about the impure fantasy I had about punching Kallista in the face the next time she was snotty with me. ‘Okay. Um, thanks. I’m just waiting for some friends while they, like, do worshipping and stuff.’

  The woman gave a quiet laugh and lifted her veil. Her hands were painted with an intricate curlicue design in gold and black, the pattern and colour of which matched the markings around her eyes. To my surprise I realised she probably wasn’t much older than me. ‘Yes, I know who you are here with. We always know when paladins arrive in the village.’

  I nodded. I thought of the others with their huge weapons and loud squabbles: we were completely non-inconspicuous as a travelling party. ‘I bet.’

  She laughed softly. ‘Demons are creatures of chaos and darkness and they thrive on death and destruction. Gods are beings of light and order; they bring forth life. The Blessed are instruments of the gods; they reflect their makers in the same way a mirror reflects sunlight.’

  ‘Now,’ she went on, ‘I waited for your companions to leave before I came over to talk to you. I want you to come with me; there’s someone who wants to see you.’

  She rose and walked a few steps before she
realised I was still in my seat. ‘You don’t have anything to fear. You will always find shelter and safety in a temple.’

  Still I hesitated. My immediate thought was that she was going to (a) try to scam me out of money, or (b) try to get me to join some peculiar, gold eyeshadow-wearing religious cult. But despite this I got up and obediently, and perhaps stupidly, followed her.

  She led me through the large room, under the light shining in through the shrine windows to another, smaller room. The shrines here were more modest, without the stained-glass glory of the main temple: most just consisting of a mural and a table with offerings.

  The priestess led me by the arm until we reached a mural depicting a bird of prey, mid-flight, surrounded by shards of light. ‘The demigod Coralin,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘Also known as the Warrior, or the Peregrine. She and her two brothers were born human, sent to us by the gods as the very first and the most powerful of the Blessed, to protect the world from demonkind.’

  She gently pressed my shoulders and I knelt down in front of the shrine. I turned my head to ask why she was showing me this mural, but as I did something flickered in the corner of my eye. I looked at the mural again. The peregrine had moved.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked again, because this was stupid. Things painted onto walls didn’t move. But the peregrine had definitely been sideways on to me, and now its angle had changed. It was tilted more towards me, like it was trying to get a better look.

  ‘Hey, did you see-’ I started, but Santine had gone.

  Heart pounding, I stared at the picture carefully, resisting the powerful urge to jump up and run out of the temple flapping my arms and yelping. The peregrine stared back at me. Stared into me.

  I moved slowly to the side, still watching the bird. Jerkily, the bird’s eye followed me like something from a Ray Harryhausen movie. I moved back in the other direction. The bird’s eye moved with me.

  I could have stayed there for hours, swaying from side to side, mesmerised, had I not heard footsteps stopping abruptly behind me. ‘What are you doing here?’ Oriel asked.

  I tilted my head round as much as I could without losing sight of the mural. ‘Oriel, you have to check this out. The bird’s eye in this painting is moving.’ I swayed to the side again, but this time the mural stayed resolutely still.

  ‘Yeah, they do that sometimes,’ he said faintly. He was staring at the bird, his face ashen.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked him. The moving mural was creepy, but no more so than a whole bunch of other stuff I’d seen over the past few days.

  He shook his head, still not taking his eyes away. ‘Why did you come back here?’

  I swallowed. ‘Some woman brought me.’

  ‘Santine!’ he roared.

  The priestess appeared ghost-like in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her. ‘Oriel, my dear, how lovely-’

  Oriel strode up to her, pointing his finger in her face. ‘Keep away from her.’ He jabbed a finger in my direction. ‘She’s no concern of yours.’

  A glower contorted Santine’s serene features. ‘Oriel, you are in a place of worship. Kindly lower your voice,’ she said sternly. ‘I would remind you that my purpose is to facilitate communication between the mortal plane and the divine see. And that is exactly what I am doing.’

  ‘And I’d remind you that you and your crones need to mind your own bloody business!’

  Santine glanced to the side and made an almost imperceptible motion with her hand and two burly guards materialised by her side. Before they could advance on us, though, a low rumble shook the floor. ‘Wait!’ Santine’s scowl changed to a look of fear as the rumble intensified. The floor beneath my feet shifted and I grabbed onto a banner to stop myself falling. The back of my neck prickled with fear: holy shit, they’d managed to piss the gods off. An offering bowl juddered to the edge of its table and toppled off, smashing and sending apples rolling across the floor.

  Santine shook her head gently and the two bodyguards moved quietly back to their posts. The rumbling stopped and she turned to Oriel stonily. ‘You and your friend should leave. Now.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ he spat back.

  I lay in my second bath, trying to appreciate the rose scented water and the fact that I no longer smelled like a homeless person, but I was finding it difficult to relax. My stomach clenched every time I remembered Oriel and Santine arguing in the temple, and twisted further when I thought about the ground shaking.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and gave it an experimental wiggle. On top of everything else, I’d had a nosebleed on the way back from the temple. I’d suffered with nosebleeds all my life, so this wasn’t exactly a Stop Press! moment, but still. Something I could have done without.

  I submerged my head, waving my hair around, mermaid-style. The inn didn’t have a separate bathroom for its guests; instead I had to order a big tin bath to be brought up to my room with huge jugs of hot water. The serving girl had looked at me as if I was mental when I asked for my bathwater to be changed halfway through, but I didn’t want to have to explain to her that I’d had a wary sniff under my shirt and realised that I would definitely need two baths. At least.

  Trying to put all thoughts of arguments and earthquakes behind me, I inspected my fingers. The rings of grime had finally dissolved into the water, leaving my hands pink and slightly pruney. I pried remnants of dark purple varnish off with my thumb nails and watched the flakes sink down into the cloudy water.

  Eventually the water turned cooler than was comfortable and I levered myself out and dried off, pressing the water out of my hair so as not to make it go frizzy. The lack of electricity - and hairdryers - had seemed a lot less peculiar when we were walking through the countryside. Thankfully it was still light until late at night and I didn’t have to risk my life by wrangling with the oil lamp on the bedside table.

  Drying between my toes, my ears suddenly pricked up. There was someone outside my door. I shook my head. Too many nights spent in the woods watching out for ghouls and beasts and god knew what else. But then there was a polite knock and I realised I’d been right.

  Throwing on my Sanctuary clothes - my old, smelly, five-days-worn ones were having the skank boiled out of them by one of the inn’s staff - I opened the door. It was Oriel, looking contrite. He also looked clean and shaved and his hair, which had been getting steadily crazier over the last few days, was swept back in shiny black spikes. He gave me a sheepish smile. ‘Hey. Do you mind if I come in?’

  ‘Um, no, fine.’ My mouth felt like I’d been sucking cotton wool.

  He perched on the edge of my bed while a voice in my head screamed, ‘There’s a boy in my room! There’s a boy in my room!’

  Oriel looked just about as uneasy as I felt and didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, eventually settling for running his hands through his hair. It gave me a lurch of recognition so strong it sent me dizzy for a second. For the last day or so I’d been avoiding him as much as possible; partly because of what I’d overheard Neve saying, which was still crippling me with embarrassment, and partly because not knowing where I knew him from was driving me properly insane.

  ‘I’m sorry about before. At the temple. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that in front of you.’

  ‘Oriel, that tremor...’ I closed my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t believe I was going to ask this. ‘Do you think it was the gods? Were they pissed off at us? About me going to that shrine?’

  His eyes widened in astonishment, like this was the last thing he’d expected me to say. ‘What? No. Absolutely not. Don’t worry about it.’ I nodded uneasily, unconvinced. Oriel got up off the bed and moved to the window. The glass had gone steamy from where I’d languished too long in the bath and he rubbed a patch clear to peer out onto the street. ‘Tremors like that happen from time to time. If it happens again, just…try not to worry. Stay calm. Think happy thoughts.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Okay?’

  I nodded. ‘Okay.’

&
nbsp; He went back to looking slightly awkward; a look that I knew mirrored my own. A thought skittered into my head, We’re never, ever this uncomfortable with each other. But then, more confusingly, But why do I even think that? I closed my eyes. I had to keep reminding myself that I’d only known this boy for five days.

  ‘Before I forget, I’ve got something for you.’ Oriel reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim package wrapped in green paper. He handed it to me and I thought I caught a faint blush on his cheeks. I opened the wrapping. Inside was a copy of a John Grisham novel, one I hadn’t read. ‘You’ve been reading that copy of Of Mice and Men since you got here. I thought you might fancy a change.’

  He wasn’t wrong. ‘Wow, this is just… Wow. It’s like the nicest present I’ve ever had.’

  He cocked one eyebrow in a move I’d once spent an entire unsuccessful afternoon trying to do. ‘Seriously? A second hand copy of The Firm is the best gift you’ve ever had? That’s, like, the saddest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’

  ‘Okay, fine,’ I laughed, dissipating the last remains of awkwardness. ‘Contextually it’s the best present I’ve ever had.’ I flicked through the book; the pages were worn, but they all seemed to be there.

  ‘Yeah, well. It’s quite a good one; I think you’ll enjoy it.’

  I looked up at him in surprise. ‘Have you read this?’ He nodded. ‘But I thought you had a different alphabet here?’

  He shifted on the window sill. ‘We do.’

  ‘So how do you-’

  He started to look uncomfortable. ‘Someone taught me how to read English.’ I was about to ask him who, but remembered one of the others mentioning that people from the Sanctuary had - rarely - stumbled through into the Jeopardy before. ‘Neve, Kallista and I have been in the Protectorate since we were thirteen; we’re used to things like sleeping rough, but the evenings can still get pretty tedious if you don’t have a decent book with you.’

  My jaw dropped open, the book lay forgotten next to me. ‘Wait, what? You’ve been in the army since you were thirteen?’

  He sucked in a breath and made a face. ‘Yeah...it probably does sound a bit weird.’

  ‘D’you think? I thought child armies only happened in crazy African civil wars.’

  ‘Okay, but just to clarify, the Protectorate isn’t a child army. We accept kids from thirteen because that’s when their Blessings reach their full power and when they do, the kids are begging to be let in.’

  Something clicked almost audibly in my mind. ‘Thirteen?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said their Blessings reach full power at thirteen.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘That’s right. Blessings first appear at a child’s first birthday and reach their height within a month or two of their thirteenth birthday.’ He started running his thumbnail in lines along the grain of the window sill. ‘Why d’you ask?’

  I shook my head, my heart thumping. ‘No reason. So, what? They just put a load of superhero teenagers in an army barracks and let them get on with it?’

  ‘They wish,’ he snorted. ‘No. It’s more like a boarding school. You get assigned a mentor and carry on your education and at the same time you get trained to control your Blessings, to use them, and then when Illvelios thinks you’re ready, usually when you’re sixteen, you start to get sent out on missions.’

  ‘Sixteen?’

  He nodded. ‘The age of majority is sixteen here.’

  I was already an adult? Beyond cool. ‘So do you live in the barracks, then?’

  He looked discomfited. ‘Um, well, no. Neve and I have our own apartments in the Citadel. Because of our father.’ He stared down at his toes, crunching them backwards and forwards in his boots.

  Of course. Their father was the king. I kept forgetting that.

  As a successful artist, my dad was moderately famous, although he marketed his paintings under an assumed name. And some people went nuts for his work, so I got what it was like to come from a privileged background, to have money.

  My dad wasn’t a king, though.

  I vaguely remembered Oriel saying something about living on a farm until he was eight and I wondered how much of a shock it had been to be transplanted to the Citadel, for everyone to suddenly know who you are.

  I cast around for something to talk about that would be less uncomfortable, but my mind kept skittering back to the word thirteen.

  Thirteen. The year I started to get good, like really good, at archery. When it seemed like I just couldn’t miss. Ever.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Oriel, I need to ask you-’ I started, just as he said, ‘There’s something I have to-’

  There was a loud knock at the door. For a long moment we looked at each other, both daring the other to speak. There was an impatient noise from the hallway and another sharp knock. ‘Come in,’ I called.

  Neve blew through the door, and raised her eyebrows, her eyes slanting between us. She’d taken advantage of the inn’s facilities, too, and was dressed in clean clothes, her hair swept up in a bun. ‘Am I interrupting? I thought it might be nice to get something to eat. You know, at some point this evening.’

  I sprang up from the bed, almost going flying into the dressing table. ‘No, no, not at all.’ I looked over at Oriel, who was still sitting by the window. ‘Are you coming downstairs for some dinner?’

  He got up from the window seat but shook his head. ‘I’ve got some things to do in town. I probably won’t see you until tomorrow morning.’ And with that, he slid past Neve and I and headed out the door.